


Fathers, Daughters, Siblings, Secrets

by TheLadyDisdain



Category: Cobra Kai (Web Series), Karate Kid (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Christmas Challenge, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-12
Updated: 2020-01-12
Packaged: 2021-02-27 08:55:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,301
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22224466
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheLadyDisdain/pseuds/TheLadyDisdain
Summary: Former Cobra boy Jimmy spends his first Christmas with his newfound daughter Alyssa. The girl has integrated well into her new family, but Jimmy suspects she's been keeping a secret or two.
Comments: 7
Kudos: 5
Collections: Cobra Kai OC Exchange





	Fathers, Daughters, Siblings, Secrets

**Author's Note:**

  * For [InvisibleObserver13](https://archiveofourown.org/users/InvisibleObserver13/gifts).



> This work is part of the Cobra Kai Christmas exchange. The characters of Alyssa, Jennifer and the boys belong to InvisibleObserver13 and her story 'Never Knew'. Thank you for letting me play with your characters, this was a lot of fun!
> 
> Any inconsistencies with 'Never Knew' should be treated as an AU, and any mistakes are my own.

It was a week before Christmas.

Jimmy had bought the tallest tree that could fit in the living room. His wife Jenn had unearthed her grandmother’s book of recipes. The boys were all on their best behavior, and this year they hadn’t even tried to look for the presents. In the previous years, Jimmy had found himself outwitted by the twins, even when he hid the gifts in the garage, or at the bottom of the laundry basket… So this year he had loaded all the presents on his car and taken them to his office at the law firm, to avoid temptations.

It was a week before Christmas, and everything was perfect in the Parker household... well, almost.

The former Cobra Kai boy turned father of five took another stealthy step towards the door of the twins’ room. Inside, he could hear a pair of voices speaking in hushed tones, but he was still too far away to make up the words.

A couple more steps, and he finally found a good place to listen.

“And... _voilá_! What do you think?”

“I think it still looks like crap, Josh.”

The door was ajar, and Jimmy saw the heads of Josh and Alyssa, partially obscured by the screen of the boy’s laptop. They seemed concentrated on a mysterious task, and he wondered what it could be. He moved a few inches forward, and the hardwood floor creaked under his feet.

“What was that?”

Alyssa’s dark head perked up, and she looked around the room and out of the window.

“Chill, Lyzzie”, said her brother. “Mom is in the kitchen making dinner, Dad has gone God-knows-where to hide our Christmas gifts, and the others are downstairs watching a movie. Don’t worry, no one will find out about this!”

“They better not. Or it will be a disaster.”

“Your secret is safe with me”, said the boy with a friendly smile.

“Thanks”, answered Alyssa with a curt nod. “And, Josh…”

“Yeah?”

“Call me ‘Lyzzie’ one more time and I’ll shave your head while you’re sleeping”, she hissed.

The boy raked his fingers through his fiery red hair, wondering if the threat was serious. Of the four Parker brothers he was the one with the biggest affinity with their newfound sister, mostly because of their shared love for music. But the girl had a temper, and Josh didn’t want to risk losing his ginger locks just because of a silly nickname.

He blinked a couple of times and fixed his eyes on the screen again.

“What if I call you ‘Miss Morgan’ instead?”

“What if I give you a black eye?” she said, but this time she was laughing.

“Okay… Alyssa it is. Nothing more, nothing less. And now, let’s finish this before Mom calls us to dinner. Oh, shoot, I think the webpage logged me out…”

The volume of the voices went down again, and Jimmy stifled a frustrated sigh. What could be so important, and so secret, that Alyssa and Josh had to keep it from the rest of the family? Josh shared absolutely everything with his twin Jordan, and Jimmy didn’t want that to change. He had been aware from the start that Alyssa’s arrival would disturb the family dynamics a little… but he never imagined that she could be a bad influence on his sons. To make things worse, Josh suddenly put on some music; a catchy time Jimmy didn’t recognize blasted across the room, destroying his hope of eavesdropping on the covert meeting. Trying to avoid the creaky floorboard he started walking backwards… until, of course, he collided with something. Or, to be more precise, someone.

“Jimmy!” came Jenn’s voice from behind him. “What's going on here?”

“Shhh! I don't want the children to hear!” He grabbed his surprised wife’s hand and led her to the master bedroom, closing the door behind them.

“Honey… can you stop acting weird and tell me why you were spying on the twins?”

“I was only spying on Josh… I mean, not spying. Watching”, Jimmy answered with an apologetic smile. “Alyssa is in there too; they’ve been very secretive all week… they were doing something on Josh’s laptop, but I have no idea what it is.”

“And your master plan was to listen through the door?” asked Jenn, with her hands on her hips.

“I need to know if she’s doing something dangerous! Like smoking, or talking to strange boys online.”

Jennifer sat on the bed and looked at her husband in disbelief.

“Oh, Jimmy… I can tell you Alyssa is not doing any of those things without having to spy on her. One: nobody in this house smokes; you know I'm like a bloodhound when it comes to cigarettes, I would have smelled it. And two: no girl in the world would talk to a boy online with her brother in the same room.”

“The Internet is not safe for kids, Jenn”, Jimmy insisted. “There's this thing called the Dark Web, and…”

“I know about the Dark Web, we watched that documentary together. But, honey... if you really think Alyssa is doing something she shouldn’t, you need to talk to her. That’s what we’ve always done with the boys, and it’s worked fine so far.”

Undeterred by the criticism, Jimmy opened a drawer on his nightstand and took out a book.

“Girls are different than boys, Jenn... you can’t use the same parenting tactics with them.”

“Tactics? I don't like the sound of that word”, she said, frowning. “Let me see that book.”

Jimmy handed it to her. It had a garish pink cover, with a collage of girls’ faces on it, and the title written in bright yellow letters.

“ _Fathers, Daughters, Siblings, Secrets: A Guide to Parenting Teenage Girls_ , by Prudence T. Washington”, Jenn read aloud. She kept her eyes fixed on the book for a few seconds… and then she burst out laughing.

“Oh, darling!” she said, while the laughter almost made her tear up. “You’ve been reading!”

“I don't see what’s so strange”, Jimmy said, offended. “I read a lot.”

“Of course you do... but not psychobabble books. Where on Earth did you get this?”

“A guy from the law firm recommended it to me.”

“I only need to see the cover to notice this is one of those useless, scaremongering self-help books”, Jenn said, flipping through the pages. “I bet you ten dollars that the author is a sage old woman with grey hair and thick glasses.”

Jimmy didn’t answer, so Jenn flipped open the back cover and looked at the author’s picture on the sleeve.

“See? Just like I described her”, she said, showing it to her husband. “I should write a self-help book myself, about how to detect a phony.”

She closed the book with a snapping sound and put it back in the drawer. Then she wrapped her arms around Jimmy’s neck.

“I know you’ve been worried about Alyssa since she arrived to live with us, my love”, she said softly. “But we’ve managed to parent four extraordinary boys without an instruction manual… she’s a girl, not a Martian. And I believe that, if she was about to do something bad, Josh would stop her, or tell us.”

“If you put it that way… it makes sense.”

“Don’t destroy Alyssa's trust in you by eavesdropping. Talk to her! If she’s in any kind of trouble, she will tell you. And if she’s not… let her keep her secrets, I'm sure they’re harmless enough.”

She gave him a peck on the lips and marched through the door.

“And now, let’s call the kids to dinner, before the casserole gets cold.”

* * *

  
The next morning, Jimmy was feeling better about the whole thing. He had taken another look at the parenting book while Jenn was asleep, and he had to admit that most of the advice in it sounded a bit preposterous.

It was a Saturday, and the rest of the household was still asleep, so he headed downstairs with the idea of making waffles for breakfast. With seven people in the house now, any meal was a complex operation, and he wanted to surprise Jenn and the kids. He opened the fridge to see what toppings were available; Jenn loved fresh fruit, especially berries… but the kids preferred chocolate syrup, bacon, and other less healthy stuff, so in the end he took out everything. He had just started with the waffle batter when he heard a voice coming from the patio. 

The voice sounded urgent. And it belonged to Alyssa.

Jimmy checked the time: eight thirty. Way too early for her to be awake on a weekend, and that detail made him suspicious again. He cracked one last egg into the bowl, turned on the KitchenAid, and tiptoed close to the window, hoping to find out what his daughter was planning and put his mind at ease.

“Come on, I need it here before Friday!” he heard her say. She was pacing up and down the patio… and she looked distressed, even a little angry. What he heard next, however, made him worry even more.

“Look, I don't care how much it costs… my brother Josh is lending me the money.”

Jimmy frowned. He was sure now that Alyssa was up to something… something important, urgent; and she had recruited Josh into her plans. Abandoning all pretense of cooking breakfast, he turned off the mixer and crouched beside the window.

Next, he saw Alyssa plop down on one of the patio chairs, still speaking to her mysterious interloper on the phone.

“I wouldn't ask you a favor if it wasn’t important, Charlie. Yes, of course it’s cold over there! It’s the middle of December”, she huffed. “But a trip to the post office isn’t going to kill you, dude!”

The clues were now piling up in Jimmy’s ears, but he couldn’t make sense of them. Unfortunately for his career as a detective, Alyssa said one or two more sentences, now in a more hushed tone, and finished the phone call, so he hurried to the refrigerator and pretended to peek inside as the girl came back into the kitchen.

“Oh!” she exclaimed, startled. “Good morning! I didn’t want to wake up anybody.”

“Good morning”, Jimmy replied with what he hoped was a completely normal smile. “I always get up early on Saturdays, don’t worry. You didn’t wake me up.”

He mussed up her hair and pointed towards the mise en place on the kitchen counter.

“I’m making waffles for breakfast. Would you like to help?”

The girl’s face lightened up.

“I love waffles! But I’ve never made them… Where did you learn? Is it hard?”

“My mother taught me”, he said with a nostalgic smile. “Senior year of high school, a few months before I left for college. She said I needed to know how to make a few basic things, because she didn’t want me living on mac and cheese and takeout Chinese food for four years.”

“That was very smart of her”, Alyssa said, with her eyes fixed on the slowly rotating whisk. “What are the toppings?”

Jimmy pointed to the table, already half set.

“Look over there. We have a little bit of everything.” 

“Oh, jam!” she exclaimed. “And dulce de leche! Wicked.”

Jimmy turned on the hob and put the waffle iron on it. It was a traditional cast iron one with a long handle, the same one Mrs. Parker had used when he was a child. To Alyssa, the contraption looked like it should belong in a museum, so she stood next to Jimmy, observing his movements with fascination.

Her Dad smiled. If there ever was a perfect moment to have a heart-to-heart with Alyssa (and find out about the mysterious Charlie on the phone), it had to be then.

“So”, he started, trying to sound nonchalant. “Were you talking to a friend from school? I hope you’ve been getting along nicely with the kids here.”

Alyssa blinked a couple of times. She was used to being independent and not give accounts of what she did or who she talked to… that had been one of the hardest things to get used to after her transplant into the Parker family. Sometimes it felt like she had moved in with the Brady Bunch.

“No, a friend from Columbia”, she said, not really keen on giving a lot of details. “It’s three hours later in South Carolina, remember?”

“Oh, of course!” Jimmy realized. “You must miss your pals over there. Were you and that girl very close? Sorry, I didn't catch her name.”

 _That’s because I didn’t say it_ , thought Alyssa.

She debated telling the truth for a second… but that would have meant uncovering her plan, so she decided to keep things hushed.

“Charlie”, she said, pretending to read the ingredients list on the jam jar. “We were okay… not the closest in the world. But it’s nice talking to old friends.”

Feeling that more questions were coming her way, she thought of a way to get out of the kitchen.

“Hey, I'm going upstairs to make my bed. Do you want me to wake up the others?” she asked with the most innocent smile she could muster. “It would be a pity if your waffles got cold after how much you’ve worked on them.”

Jimmy raised an eyebrow. As a lawyer, he was an expert in noticing when someone was being evasive, and now he was sure there was something fishy… Alyssa tended to be more sulky than helpful in the morning, and this sudden interest for tidying up her room before breakfast was not normal.

“Good idea”, he said. “Careful when you wake up Jesse, okay? I don’t want another fight to the death in this house.”

“Nah, I think he’s scared of me now”, she said with a cocky smile.

“Oh, and… Alyssa?” said Jimmy, halting her before she left.

“Yeah?”

“You know you can talk to me… or to Jenn… about anything that worries you, right?”

“Ah… sure”, said the girl, cocking her head to one side. “Thanks. I’ll be right back.”

While Alyssa ran upstairs, Jimmy flipped the waffle iron with a little more force than necessary. Since the first day it had been two steps forward and one step back with his newfound daughter… but he hated being lied to. And, unless the girls in South Carolina were calling each other ‘dude’ now, he was pretty sure Alyssa had been talking to a boy.

He didn't have much time to keep musing over Alyssa’s phone call and the (possibly) juvenile delinquent Charlie from Columbia, because a minute later Jennifer appeared, followed by their army of sons, all of them attracted by the smell of breakfast. Jimmy kissed his wife good morning, looked at all the cheerful faces in front of him, and decided not to keep interrogating his daughter. 

Trust was something that had to be built over time. And, disappointed as he was that Alyssa was keeping things from him… well, she was a teenage girl, and teenage girls needed their own space. Besides, it was almost Christmas, and Jimmy was one of those people who believed Christmas made everything and everyone better.

He put the big tray of waffles on the table just as Alyssa came back through the door, smiling and claiming ownership of the dulce de leche jar. 

His family was happy. The potentially dangerous boy was more than two thousand miles away. There would be time to deal with things after New Year… and, if that boy Charlie turned out to be a problem, he still remembered enough of his Cobra Kai training to give that ‘dude’ a good scare.

Only as a last resource, of course.

* * *

  
The week passed; Christmas morning was coming closer, and the house was in relative peace.

Every year, the Parker boys found a reason to argue with each other during the school holidays, out of pure boredom. Nothing big, though, just the usual disagreements over who got to shower first, what movie to watch, or which one of them should take out the trash. Jimmy and Jennifer always put up with it, solving minor disputes with a smile and saying in a loud voice how happy they would be when school started again and their sons stopped behaving like savages.

But the night before Christmas always brought an oasis of calm to the house. After dinner, the whole family gathered in front of the TV to watch a holiday themed movie. Jordan and Jesse had made a very good case for Die Hard… but Josh had argued that Alyssa had never seen The Muppet Christmas Carol. This lack of ‘classic’ film culture felt completely outrageous to the boys, so they all agreed, for once, that the evening should be spent watching the Muppets sing.

_Only one more sleep til Christmas…_

When the big day arrived, Jimmy was the first one to get up, as usual. He was sure one or two of the boys were awake, unable to sleep late out of excitement for the presents. But the rules of the Parker family were clear: no presents could be opened before breakfast. The rule had been established by Jenn after that time the twins woke her up at dawn when they were four years old, and it was the only thing that allowed her and Jimmy to get a good night’s sleep on Christmas Day.

Breakfast was… in two words, polite and efficient. None of the kids spoke except to give thanks, they were in such a hurry to finish their eggs and bacon. And nobody asked for seconds, because it would have delayed everybody else… so the meal was miraculously over in twenty minutes, followed by a noisy stampede towards the family room when Jenn finally gave them permission to leave the table.

Jimmy smiled as he observed Alyssa run after her brothers. He helped his wife put the dishes in the washing machine, and followed the sound of excited voices down the hall. He and Jenn had arranged the presents neatly under the tree the evening before… but of course the boys and Alyssa had added theirs later, and the result was that you could barely see the carpet under all the brightly colored boxes. The only kid who wasn’t in the secret yet was Jayden, and the rest of the family was set on making the little boy enjoy the fantasy and the surprise for one more year. Maybe two, with a bit of luck.

The boys dove into the pile of gifts in a minute, leaving little mountains of discarded paper and boxes after them.

Soon, Josh was opening the box of a brand new guitar, Jordan brightened up when he saw the sleek lines of his laptop, and Jesse congratulated himself for getting the biggest present in the room: a racing bike. Little Jay was over the moon with a Lego Millenium Falcon, a present from Uncle Bobby that would keep him (and also his father) entertained for weeks. And there were also several packages for Jimmy and Jenn, of course, but they always opened theirs at the end. It was much more satisfactory to see the kids enjoy themselves first.

Jimmy’s attention turned towards Alyssa. She opened a shoebox, gasped, and took out a pair of Adidas Gazelle sneakers. Then she mouthed a silent ‘thank you’ to Jimmy.

“How did you know I liked these? And they’re red, just like I wanted them!” she whispered, trying not to be heard by Jayden.

“Jenn told me that you stared at these for five minutes when she took you shopping the other day”, he answered in the same hushed voice. “I’m glad you like them.”

He got an energetic hug as only response, and also the reward of seeing a bright smile on his daughter’s face. Then, Alyssa went back to the tree and dove into the sea of packages. In her hands appeared an oblong box, the size of a large book, that she gave to Jimmy with a flourish.

“Alyssa, you didn’t have to buy me anything”, he said, feeling a little guilty. “We only give you and your brothers a small allowance, and…”

“I didn’t _buy_ you anything”, she interrupted him. “I made it. Although, if you want to discuss a raise at the next family meeting, I’ll be all ears.”

He opened the package carefully, unfolding the paper instead of ripping into it. Inside the box was a volume bound in blue fabric, like a scrapbook. But when he opened the cover he realized what it really was, and his eyes filled with tears.

The first page of the photo album (because that’s what it was, of course) showed a picture of a baby with a tuft of dark hair on her head. On the next page stood the same baby, at about two years of age, holding an umbrella that was twice her size.

He kept flipping the pages, and the life of the little girl unfolded in front of him: Alyssa on her first day of kindergarten, surrounded by other children. Alyssa with her late uncle in a college classroom, sitting on top of the professor’s desk. Alyssa on a carousel, riding a pink horse. Alyssa studying, playing, laughing, growing up from one picture to the next. And then, on the last page, a family picture of himself, Jenn, the boys, and the same dark haired baby… now grown up into a fifteen-year-old girl.

Some of the pics had elaborated frames, or text bubbles, or quotes printed under them. This wasn’t just some generic album bought from a shop, it was practically a work of art.

“Alyssa. this… this is wonderful. What gave you the idea?”

“Well, you missed a few years of my life by accident”, she shrugged, “So I thought this could be a good way of making up for lost time. And also make you see what a cute baby I was.”

“You were adorable”, said a voice behind her, and Alyssa turned around to see a grinning Jenn. “I’m sure this is the best gift your father has ever received.”

She gave the surprised girl a hug, and then somebody else joined the conversation.

“Hey, aren’t you going to tell them how I helped?” asked Josh, admiring his work with a cocky smile.

“Yeah, it’s a good thing that we have a graphic design genius at home”, said the girl, giving her brother a playful punch. “But don’t take all the credit! My friend Charlie sent most of the pictures from South Carolina… without him there would be no album.”

A light went off in Jimmy’s brain.

“Is that the same Charlie you were talking to the other day?”

“Yeah, I asked him to go to university storage room where they keep my uncle’s things, and look for a few pictures. He complained a lot, because storage rooms scare him… but in the end he sent me more than the forty I needed.”

“Oh”, said Jimmy in a soft voice. “So… were you and this Charlie dating before you moved here?”

“Ew, no!” answered Alyssa, wrinkling her nose. “Charlie is _old_ , he’s got to be at least twenty-six. He was my uncle’s teaching assistant… last year he got married to another grad student. We went to his wedding, look.”

She got her phone from her pocket and showed Jimmy a pic of a newly married couple. The groom had thick rimmed glasses and wore Converse shoes with his tux. And a polka-dot bow tie.

“Charlie is the biggest nerd in the Universe”, Alyssa continued. “And he’s a softie, too. When I told him I wanted to surprise you on Christmas day, he didn’t stop until he found me all the pictures I wanted.”

“That’s… that’s brilliant. I really don’t know what to say”, muttered Jimmy, wrapping her up in another hug that also included Josh. “Jenn is right, this is the best gift anyone has ever given to me.”

“And this is being a fantastic Christmas”, Alyssa answered. “Now, would this be a good moment to sit down and talk about that raise in our allowance…?”

* * *

  
Later that day, after all the presents had been opened and all the Christmas food joyously eaten, Jenn finished tidying up the kitchen and went to the living room. There, Jimmy had just finished putting all the discarded wrapping paper in bags, and the room looked normal again.

“I’m going to take all this to the recycling center”, he said, huffing. “Where are the kids? It’s very quiet in the house.”

“Don’t worry, they’re all upstairs playing videogames on the twins’ new console. Wow, four bags of paper! Good thing we’re recycling it, it would be a pity of all this would go in the trash.”

She peeked into one of the bags, thinking she had seen something strange.

“Jimmy, darling… you put a book in this bag by mistake.”

“Oh, I did. But it wasn’t a mistake”, he said with a deep sigh. Reaching into the bag, he took out a volume with a loud pink cover that Jenn recognized immediately.

“Your self-help book? You’re throwing it away?”

“I could donate it to the library… but I don’t want anybody else reading this rubbish and making their daughter’s life difficult because of it. I’m sorry for Prudence T. Washington, but… I’m _this_ close to sending that woman an email asking her to stop giving advice on teenagers and write something less dangerous. Like a cookbook, or an instruction manual for a washing machine.”

“I’m really glad to hear that, my love”, Jenn said, laughing, as she helped her husband tie the bags and load them into the car.

“Good riddance, Mrs. Washington… and Merry Christmas!”


End file.
